nes

The world’s tiniest Game Boy Color, introduced at the 2016 Hackaday SuperConference, is a work of art. This microscopic game console inspired [c.invent] to create how own gaming handheld. His Keymu project on hackaday.io describes an open source, keychain-sized gaming handheld that its builder claims is really the world’s tiniest. How did he make it smaller? It’s a miniature Game Boy Advance SP, and it folds up in a handy clamshell case.

While he’s a Pi fan, [c.invent] felt the Pi Zero was too big and clunky for what he had in mind–a keychain-sized handheld. Only the Intel Edison was compact enough. He began with a custom PCB with a connector for the Edison’s fragile ribbon cable, then added an 1.5″ OLED display and an 11.7mm speaker, all powered by a 220 mAh lithium battery. [c.invent] also created inside a custom folding 3D-printed case that protects the Keymu’s electronics from keys and pocket lint.

Unlike the mini Game Boy Color, [c.invent] aims to create a fully fledged emulation console. The Edison incorporates a Linux distribution that allowing it to install emulators for GameBoy Color, GBA, NES, and SNES.

If you wanted to name a few things that hackers love, you couldn’t go wrong by listing off vintage console controllers, the ESP system-on-chip platform, and pocket tools for signal capture and analysis. Combine all of these, and you get the ESP32Thang.

At its heart, the ESP32Thang is based around a simple concept – take an ESP32, wire up a bunch of interesting sensors and modules, add an LCD, and cram it all in a NES controller which helpfully provides some buttons for input. [Mighty Breadboard] shows off the device’s basic functionality by using an RFM69HW module to allow the recording and replay of simple OOK signals on the 433 MHz band. This is a band typically used by all sorts of unlicenced radio gear – think home IoT devices, wireless doorbells and the like. If you want to debug these systems when you’re out and about, this is the tool for you.

This is a fairly straightforward build at the lower end of complexity, but it gets the job done with style. The next natural step up is a Raspberry Pi with a full software defined radio attached, built into a Nintendo DS. If you build one, be sure to let us know. This project might serve as some inspiration.

With the wide availability of SPI and I2C modules these days, combined with the ease of programming provided by the Arduino environment, this is a project that just about any hacker could tackle after passing the blinking LED stage. The fact that integrating such hardware is so simple these days is truly a testament to the fact that we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

The original Nintendo Entertainment System is affectionately called “the toaster” due to the way the cartridge is inserted. [MrBananaHump] decided to take things a bit literally and installed a NES inside an actual toaster. This isn’t [MrBananaHump’s] design, the Nintoaster comes to us from [vomitsaw], who also built the SuperNintoaster. Since [vomitsaw] was kind enough to document his original build, [MrBananaHump] was able to build upon it.

The target toaster for this build was a plastic Sunbeam model found at a thrift store for $5. [MrBananaHump] gutted the toaster and cleaned out years of toast crumbs. The Nintendo mainboard would fit perfectly inside a toaster, except for two things – the RF Modulator and the expansion port. The expansion port was never used in the US version of the NES so it can be desoldered and removed. The RF also needs to be desoldered and relocated.

By far the biggest job in this casemod is hand-wiring each of the 72 pins for the cartridge port. It’s a tedious job, and it probably won’t look pretty. Keep your wires short, and things will probably work thanks to the relatively low clock speed of the NES.

The cartridge goes in one toast slot. [MrBananaHump] mounted his controller ports, power and reset buttons in the second slot. A bit of expanded metal grid completes the slot. Sure, it’s not exactly pretty inside, but with the case on, this becomes a rather nice looking build.

If you were a child of the ’80s, there is a good chance that you had a Nintendo console in your youth, the classic 8-bit NES. And if you were one of those NES owners, it’s therefore probably that the peripheral you lusted after was Nintendo’s arcade-inspired Advantage controller. This replaced the game pad with a full-size arcade joystick and buttons, and has become an expensive and sought-after accessory in the years since.

Faithful to the original in its layout, the new Advantage clone features a Turbo mode for rapid fire, though rather than the buttons you’d have had in the ’80s this model features a toggle switch. The joystick mechanism used was a Sanwa JLF, and the buttons were Sanwa OBSF-30s. He’s posted a video showing the finished item being put through its paces.

If you were thinking “I should spend $130 on LEGO bricks and build a giant USB NES controller just to see what that would be like,” but you were afraid of spending that much money, [BrownDogGadgets] has you covered. He built a giant NES controller out of LEGO. The controller is designed in LEGO Digital Designer, which lets you create a virtual model, then get a full list of parts which can be ordered online.

The electronics are based on a Teensy LC programmed to appear as a USB keyboard, and the buttons are standard push buttons. The insides are wired together with nylon conductive tape. LEGO was an appropriate choice because the Teensy and switches are built on top of LEGO compatible PCBs, so components are just snapped in place. The system is called Crazy Circuits and is a pretty neat way to turn electronics into a universal and reusable system.

If that controller is too big, they’ve also used the same circuit with some laser cut parts for your own controller. If you do want to go even bigger, take a look at [Baron von Brunk’s] LEGO NES controller, which used the electronics from a real controller.

Nintendo has discontinued a Classic gaming console. It’s a pity, yes, but with the release of Nintendo’s new gaming console, they probably have bigger fish to fry. That doesn’t mean these discontinued Nintendo consoles will die a slow, miserable death locked away in a closet; at least one of them will live on with the heart of a Raspberry Pi.

This is a project [Liam] has been working on since 2012, just after he got the first edition of the Raspberry Pi. While some people were figuring out how to stuff the Pi inside a Nintendo Entertainment System or a Super Nintendo Entertainment System, [Liam] decided to embed the Pi inside a console of a more recent vintage: the Nintendo GameCube.

The first phase of this project was simply to get the Pi running inside the enclosure of the non-working GameCube he picked up. The power supply in this console was well designed, and after a quick perusal through some online documentation, [Liam] found a stable 5V with enough amps to power the Pi. After ripping out the internals of this console with the help of a quickly hacked together ‘Nintendo screwdriver’, [Liam] had a perfectly functional Pi enclosed in a Nintendo chassis.

Time marches on, and after a while, the Raspberry Pi 2 was released. By this time, retro emulation was hitting the big time, and [Liam] decided it was time for an upgrade. He disassembled this Nintendo console again, routed new wires and inputs to the original controller ports, and used a Dremel to route a few holes for the HDMI and SD card slot.

With the addition of a few SNES-inspired USB controllers, RetroPi, and a few ROMs, [Liam] has a wonderful console full of classic emulation goodness, packaged in an enclosure Nintendo isn’t making any more.

By now, most of us have had some experience getting ROMs from classic video games to run on new hardware. Whether that’s just on a personal computer with the keyboard as a controller, or if it’s a more refined RetrioPie in a custom-built cabinet, it has become relatively mainstream. What isn’t mainstream, however, is building custom hardware that can run classic video games on the original console (translated). The finished project looks amazing, but the prototype blows us away with it’s beauty and complexity.

[phanick]’s project is a cartridge that is able to run games on the Polish Famicon clone called the Pegasus. The games are stored on an SD card but rather than run in an emulator, an FPGA loads the ROMs and presents the data through the normal edge-connector in the cartridge slot of the console. The game is played from the retro hardware itself. It takes a few seconds to load in each ROM, but after that the Pegasus can’t tell any difference between this and an original cartridge.

The original prototype shown here was built back in 2012. Since then it’s been through a few iterations that have reduced the size. PCBs were designed and built in-house, and the latest revision also includes a 3D-printed case that is closer to the size of the original Famicon cartridges.

Even if you don’t have an interest in classic video games or emulation, the video below is worth checking out. (Be sure to turn on the subtitles if you don’t speak Polish.) [phanick] has put in a huge amount of time getting all of the details exactly right, and the level of polish shows in the final product. In fact, we’ve featured him before for building his own Famicom clone.